Getting down … to Earth

Got nothing else to do during the pandemic, so I’ve been playing a bunch of my records. Listen, OK, listen, OK, listen, OK, listen, OK. Not necessarily ripping them, though.

Then I dropped Eddie Floyd’s “Down To Earth” on the turntable the other night, and right out of the gate … WHAT is this? Oh, yeah. Gotta rip this.

Expecting more of Eddie Floyd’s smooth Memphis soul and R&B vocals, it was anything but. It’s Eddie Floyd and guitarist Steve Cropper getting heavy and getting freaky with some help from songwriter Sir Mack Rice. They’re all experimenting. It is 1971, after all, and times are changing.

“Down To Earth” begins with a cover of Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready.” I did not expect that heavy rock guitar intro, nor for things to go from there to smooth soul to some Doobie Brothers-style rocking out to taking it back down before steaming through a furious finish.

“People Get Ready,” Eddie Floyd, from “Down To Earth,” 1971.

Then we trippin’. Eddie covers the Detroit Wheels’ “Linda Sue Dixon” — Sir Mack’s LSD shout-out — followed by “My Mind Was Messed Around At The Time,” in which Eddie loses his lady because “I guess I got a little too high.”

“Linda Sue Dixon,” Eddie Floyd, from “Down To Earth,” 1971.

“My Mind Was Messed Around At The Time,” Eddie Floyd, from “Down To Earth,” 1971.

The last cut on the record, “Changing Love,” is equal parts Southern jam and full-on psychedelic soul as imagined by Floyd and Cropper.

“Changing Love,” Eddie Floyd, from “Down To Earth,” 1971.

Can’t say there’s a bad cut on the record.

(Yes, this post looks a bit different. Trying to learn the new-to-me WordPress block editor on the fly after 13 years with the original editor.)